Anssi Vanjoki: Nokia switching to Android would be like peeing your pants for warmth

Nokia’s executive vice president of mobile solutions, Anssi Vanjoki, let an interesting analogy go when speaking with the Financial Times today. When asked about the possibility of his company switching mobile operating systems from Symbian to Android, Mr. Vanjoki compared the prospective move to Finnish boys who “pee in their pants” during the winter months for warmth; the temporary relief acquired is soon followed by a larger issue. Nokia obviously feels it can differentiate and add value to the mobile experience with Symbian and Meego; a task it presumably would find difficult with Android. Regardless, we salute you Mr. Vanjoki for one of the most epic analogies we’ve heard from an EVP. Also… do Finnish boys really pee their pants in the winter?

so the Finnish piss themselves…. sounds like some iPhone owners i know.

Perspective

You know people that piss themselves? Nice. Do they soil themselves too?

Jerry Tale

I don’t get it.

Tay

Thad funny but he has a point though

Steve

Pretty sad if the companies that are “peeing their pants” are making significantly better profits than Nokia

ljp

They aren’t. Despite Nokia’s bumbling and dive to 7% margins, they still make more money than HTC. Which is the only Android manufacturer posting healthy profits although Android isn’t the only thing they make.

Timo

No, we don’t pee in our pants in the wintertime. But maybe he has done it a few times.

toursux

This is why Nokia sux!!!

toursux

Symbian will be the next windows mobile!!

stegerva

it means: feel good (warm) at start but useless later.

http://www.absolutegameplay.com [rono]

He’s just trying to defend Nokia’s position.
HTC and a few others have been offering WM phones for years. They and the platform didn’t suffer for that.

AT33

He is so right man! Android is nothing but a hype in the US. It brings nothing Symbian can’t do already. Symbian is the best solution for mit trier smartphones and MeeGo will set the standard in high-end mobile computing and customization. Symbian 4 will be even better and will even be great on high-end devices! Nokia is still No. 1 and rolling strong! Boy the E7, N8 and C7 look tight!!! Let’s not start talking about the N9 coming out in a couple months! They will sell more than all androids, iPhones and blackberries COMBINED!!! That’s dominance! Go Nokia!

Jarrett

Although I agree that Nokia is fine (for the moment) their biggest concern should be getting their new wares to customers when they say they will.

N97, late
N900, late
N8, now late

Without execution your plan means little.

PAPINYC

Winter’s afoot and so is Nokia’s much anticipated release; I think it’s more like Anssi will soon be peeing in his pants if the N-8 does N-ada.

shagge68

Thinking like this will cause Nokia will lose the worldwide #1 spot. Think General Motors and their refusal to change to the market. Customers buy what they want; not what you decide is best for them. Advice: don’t make statements that bold as you may 1 day be explaining how you were wrong to the world.

AT33

Nokia is not refusing to change to market demand buddy, that’s Apple for ya right there. Nokia is more like Toyota.. best in every segment, soon also the high end segment.. they just had a long winter sleep and they’re waking up fast.

Jarrett

I think I would have gone Mercedes/BMW/Audi for your argument. Toyota,really?

Baester

I think he’s referring to Toyota capturing all market segments – low, medium and high – as Toyota does in a country like Japan or even in Western countries with their multibrand strategy (using Lexus to capture the luxury segment).

Macdaddybuff

If peeing your pants is cool consider me Miles Davis

DonnyKerabatsos

though android is nothing special, symbian is terrible and looks like the dos of phone OSs

http://robert.aitchison.org Robert Aitchison

Not sure if he’s trying to defend his company’s position or simply grasping for headlines, in either case I predict he’s wrong.

Nokia is the only one left with Symbian, which makes it effectively a proprietary OS, right now they have good market share but apps are going to be the future of smart phones and developers won’t be investing in iOS AND Android AND Symbian.

Within a couple years Symbian will be a feature phone OS and Nokia will have switched to Android or will be out of the top 5 in terms of market share.

Downtown Clown

Read comment #30 and you will see why you are incorrect. They won’t be switching to Android anytime soon.

Jeeverz

my belly button smells like fudge

Hollaman

Yeah, except… no it can’t… symbian has and always will suck. Only eurojerks dissagree.

Baester

USA USA!

justme

I as an American find that statement false sir. It is the best OS out, which is why Nokia is suing over apple over Ios and its blatent copy of pretty much the entire code of the programing…

Erik

This is the first I have heard of Symbian.

Geri O

I’d rather pee in my pants than crap in my britches.

Which is what Nokia is doing if they don’t make some attitude changes toward Symbian.

Jason Lackey

Nokia hardware with Android on top would be sooooo nice.

BBM Addict

Not a Nokia fan, but why do people expect the number 1 smartphone manufacturer to commoditize itself by joining the Android bandwagon? If they do this, they are essentially in a hardware battle (race to the bottom) against every other OEM running Android. The top players (Nokia, RIM & Apple) are not going to go down this path. And if anything, my suspicion is the OEMs that are already down this path are thinking about a strategy to help differentiate themselves from the herd (e.g. HTC building its own OS).

NuShrike

Certainly not HTC. They already made it quite clear by not buying webOS.

Eric

Kind of like the crap he takes in his pants each time he sees Nokia’s declining market share.

CARL

I’m a very disappointed Nokia N95-8GB customer in Europe. Best HW of its time with worst Symbian SW implementation. Problem was not Symbian itself, had Symbian on previous 3G Sony Ericsson V800 which was working extremely well. Problem was Nokia who never implemented Symbian correctly on this top phone. I up-dated the Firmware of the phone 3 times over 2 years despite their backup was not working so I lost everything but my contacts each time, and key errors were NEVER CORRECTED. I lost 4 x points of my driving licence for non-functional Voice Recognition. Replication of my Lotus Notes calendar stopped working when Notes moved to V8 and Nokia never up-graded their SW…..etc. Don’t think I’ll ever buy Nokia again, even if they were to endorse Androïd. I would not trust them for doing that properly. My next phone will be a European HSPA+ or LTE version of HTC EVO 4G with better batteries and WW coverage, or closest match if HTC continues to refuse to bring that to Europe (HTC Desire HD is short here, just an HD2 refresh w Androïd)

Sean

I feel your disappointment there. Last year I purchased a Nokia N97 and was at first impressed with it (this was my first smartphone). I quickly began to realize that there wasn’t much in the way of applications available for it, and that’s just when the OVI store decided to work. Then the hardware and software problems began. The lock switch on the side broke. The OS completely gave out so I had to reinstall. The sliding camera cover on the back scratched up the cheap plastic that was covering the lens so that when I took pictures some of the light from the flash would bleed over into picture. Bluetooth quit working. The OS seemed to be sluggish and unresponsive with almost everything. It would crash rather frequently. The last week that I was using it the screen would flicker every time I sent a text message.

Overall the phone was a good concept, it just had one of the worst implementations I have ever seen. The hardware had potential. Some of it was just cheap. The cheap stuff failed. The OS? There were more holes in it than a sponge. I’ve since moved on to Android.

– control of Os
– control of storefront
– control of customers
– ability to truly differentiate on Sw front

and they would become commodity hw mfg pushing money to google’s direction.

Makes zero sense for Nokia.

And oh yeah, great analogy! :)

MicroNix

While that maybe true for Nokia, this idiot’s comment was uncalled for. It lacks class and shows an arrogant company that wouldn’t be making statements like that if something wasn’t starting to cut into their bread and butter. Android sales are on such a steep uprise that companies like Nokia have to be shaking in their boots. So what better thing to do than to kick out some FUD and bash the competition in an attempt at damage control?

I’m sure for $700 HTC and Motorola could make an end all be all phone too. Hell, all they need is a better camera, a little more refinement on the OS interface and they’ve got it wrapped up with Android. As Nokia will soon find out, if phone A can do what phone B does but cheaper, you aren’t going to make a ton of sales if you are company B.

Billum

Dude the N8 isn’t going to cost $700 that’s the cool part and it’s unlocked. Get a grip HTC makes junk and mark my words they will try to introduce their own OS before it’s all said and done. They aren’t going to want to be Google’s or MS’s bitch forever. The profit is in controlling the whole widget. Sometimes you guys are such morons on this site!

rOpO

can this guy spell CLUELESS? must be the volcano ashes clouding his perception.

bearleton

This is hilarious. As a surfer we pee all the time to stay warm. As for Symbian, I think they’re throwing money down a hole.

Jeremy

Screw Nokia… I have not seen a phone of theirs I want for years. They will have to do a lot better than the N8 to get me on a Nokia. They must be continually pissing their pants to get the warm feeling…. pretty soon… it will be crap because they took to long to get to the restroom.